I'd say that everyday people's reasoning about ethical matters is subtle, and recognizes the distinction between what is and what should be, and that the hungry person will agree that they eat the bread because they desire the bread rather than because the bread is there.

Actually, from the Epicurean point of view, it could be argued that the herd's ethical reasoning is too subtle -- what plagues people are these ideas which cause anxiety, and so the ideas must be removed so that the person can attend to the simple and obvious pleasures of life rather than fretting over what they have no control over.

I really can't figure out what you're getting at.

I don't quite grant your premise, anyway. The differences across cultures and times make it quite obvious that 'the Good' in the terms you're using is just a group agreement to some moral boundaries. This is not particularly predictable as between groups, or across time. Your syllogism (as such) simply isn't giving what you want it to.

What people deem to be good is predictable.
What is predictable is not arbitrary.
Therefore what people deem to be good is not arbitrary. — Leontiskos

Which people? Predictable by whom, to what degree, and under what circumstances? Is this simpyl a statistical reading of past attitudes? None of this helps... "what people deem to be good" is insufficiently specific, anyway. This is a hodge-podge at best, giving nothing reasonably helpful.

Those boundaries are arbitrary. The collective agreement to them doesn't touch that. To be non-arbitrary you need to be pointing to something which has informed them, which is universally recognized. I see nothing of the kind, until we move into religion. But then, non-arbitrariness is baked in there exactly to get around this problem. Both issues seem to support my contention.

because they desire the bread — Moliere

To place bread in front of someone who is hungry does not involve me in any "oughts", just "is's," and yet we know exactly what the person will do. The common person knows why: you ought to eat when you are hungry.

I don't quite grant your premise, anyway. [...] This is not particularly predictable as between groups, or across time. — AmadeusD

So are you saying that you do not grant the first premise? You think the argument is valid but the first premise is false?

Better to give a precise critique than to attempt to throw the kitchen sink at my short post.

To place bread in front of someone who is hungry does not involve me in any "oughts", just "is's," and yet we know exactly what the person will do. The common person knows why: you ought to eat when you are hungry. — Leontiskos

The real world is not so simple.

There's a reason for the saying, No good deed remains unpunished. So often, doing "good" ends badly somehow. Just look at the hunger relief attempts in Africa. They have failed in so many ways, and created numerous new problems.

And secondly, once a person's trust has been betrayed enough times, they don't behave in the neat predictable way that you assume in your bread giving example (which is more about social trust than anything else).

In fact, "growing up", "maturing" is about overcoming a childish, naive belief in goodness and honesty.

What people deem to be good is predictable. — Leontiskos

This is a truism. Yes, ideally, it is true, but it is often useless in real-world application.
Real-world situations are usually so complex that more than simple truisms are needed in order to navigate those situations without damage to oneself or others.

Why should one do that which is good? No, I don't think that good is synonymous with, "something one ought to do". — Hyper

Too bad, that's the definition of good. What you're really asking is, "How do I know if I ought to do this?" In which you can discuss and debate trying to find some objective solution, descend into the idiocy that is subjective morality, or give up because its too hard but you can't admit that and say, 'There is no morality.'

If you are good, it will be good for you, you will experience something that you perceive as good.” And you’ve been reading it as “It is morally more desirable for you to be a good person.”

I would tend to disagree with both. It is not always good for us to have what we "perceive as good." We can be wrong about what is truly good or truly best. I wouldn't necessarily disagree with the bolded part, yet I fear this framing might lead towards the another "slide into multiplicity" whereby we have many sui generis "Goods" with "moral good" constituting just one good among a plurality.

The point of a principle and measure is that it unifies a disparate multitude, resolving the problem of the "One and the Many." We can know the vast plurality of being because, even if there are infinite causes, there are a finite number of principles each realized in many times and places (Aristotle's critique of Anaxagoras at the outset of the Physics).

And I fear your following sentences confirm this suspicion. My point though is that "being good" (i.e. being truly better people, living truly better lives) is "good for us," that is, "it is actually better and more truly desirable," to be "morally good," although I would prefer to say "virtuous," instead of "morally good." Moral good is not its own sort of good here, distinct from the good of a "good car" or "good food." All related to flourishing. Rather, moral good is a more perfect manifestation of a principle analogously realized across a multitude.

That does not mean that we currently desire to be virtuous or morally good, or to act in ways that are virtuous or morally good. In the states of vice, incontinence, and continence we don't desire what is good. Rather, the point is that "if we knew the truth about what is better, we would prefer to act virtuously and to be virtuous," and "if we did not suffer from ignorance or weakness of will, we shall always choose the better over the worse." Again, Milton's Satan does not say "evil be thou evil for me."

Since you agree that it is better to be Socrates, rather than a cowardly version of Socrates, then it should make sense why it is good for Socrates to be virtuous. Socrates is free to "do the right thing," in a way the cowardly Socrates is not.

It could be the case that telling the truth in a particular case will do you no good whatsoever – it is not a good for you -- but truthtelling is still important to our community, so we recommend it nevertheless.

It seems plausible that telling the truth sometimes does no one much good. This is why I prefer the term "virtuous" to "morally good" and to focus on people and not individual acts. In The Dark Knight was Batman right to hide (to lie about) the fact that Harvey Dent degenerated into the monstrous Two Face? That seems to be what the film would lead us to believe. But rather than quibble over whether any individual deception is morally good or bad, given the vast contingencies involved, I think it's easier to say that it is better to be "prudent, loving, and charitable, etc." such that one is virtuous in how one goes about any such decisions.

"Know thyself" is, in part, an ethical command. This is why analyzing acts in abstraction is often unhelpful. Would it be better to stick up for someone who is being unfairly punished and to take the blame oneself (particularly if you are the person truly responsible)? Probably. But if you know yourself well, and you know that you're very likely to buckle under pressure and then shift the blame back onto the person who was going be unjustly punished, and you know that this in turn will make their punishment far worse, then perhaps you shouldn't do that.

More realistically, it isn't always good to over-promise, even if your promises involve doing good, if you know you won't be able to keep those promises.

Yes, the equivocation is a matter of degree. But if they meant exactly the same thing, the statement would be vacuous.

Are the theorems of geometry vacuous because they are already contained in Euclid's postulates? Are syllogisms vacuous because all conclusions are contained in the premises? Is deterministic computation vacuous because its results always follow from the inputs with a probability of 100%?

We might think "2+2" is just another way to say "4," and "1 ÷ 3" just another way to say "1/3," but "179 ÷ 3 " is "59 and 2/3rds" seems genuinely informative unless you're an arithmetic prodigy.

Plus, not all circles are viscous circles. I would say "it's good (truly better) for you to be good—to be a good person and live a good life," is circular in a sense, but the way an ascending spiral is circular. It loops back around on itself at higher levels, with greater depths beneath it, in a sort of fractal recurrence.

The point of a truly transcedent Good, Hegel's "true infinite " as set against the "bad infinite," (the latter being defined in terms of the finite, the former being truly "without limit") is that it is never fully "contained." As St. Gregory of Nyssa has it, the beatific vision is an infinite asymptotic approach to the One who is the Good.

Since I tend to agree with Hegel's case for a circular, fallibalist epistemology, I see no great difficulty in the lack of a "foundation." One cannot find such a foundation for any facts, not "I have hands," nor "the principle of non-contradiction holds." Reason, being transcedent, can always question such foundations—"the Logos is without beginning or end" because it is the ground for "beginning" and "end," "before" and "after."

As to the idea that "all fortune is good fortune," I feel like that is a separable proposition and it only makes sense in framed in the rather complex philosophy of history and Providence that comes up through Eusebius, St. Jerome, Boethius, St. Maximus, etc. and perhaps recovered to some degree by Hegel (a theology student who encountered the Patristics). It requires a corporate view of man and of man's freedom, e.g., St. Gregory of Nyssa's view of Adam as containing all men, the idea that particulars are "in" their principles (Diophantus), like the idea that all Jews , even those alive today, were present at the presentation of the Torah (Deut 29:9-14).

The point is that the identity of Lady Fortuna, properly understood, is Providence.



:up:

Right, it's worth noting that Hume's division on comes up in a particular context where renewed Euthyphro Dilemmas are leading to ideas like Divine Command Theory where "what is good," is ultimately tied to some sort of inscrutable act of will. The question, "is God's freedom limited by the fact that God can only do what is good," is incoherent on the understanding that God is Goodness itself.

I know of no similar move in the Eastern tradition or among the Islamic scholars, and the ancient Western ideas that get somewhat close are still quite different. This is where Taylor's "subtraction narratives" of secularism, where secularism is just "rational thought with superstition removed," are dangerous, because it obscures the setting in which Hume's point is makes any sense at all.

I think that, like so much of Hume's thought, the Guillotine relies on question begging. Hume is a diagnostician, seeing what follows from the assumptions and prejudices of his era. But ask most people "why is it bad for you if I burn out your eyes, or if I burn out your sons eyes," and the responses will be something like:

"If you burn out my eyes it would be incredibly painful and then I would be blind, so of course it wouldn't be good."

The response: "ah ha! Look, you're tried to justify a value statement about goodness with facts!" and the idea that what is "good" doesn't relate to these facts is prima facie ridiculous here. As JS Mill says, "one has to make some significant advances in philosophy to believe it." You only get to a position where it possible for it to be "choiceworthy" to prefer "what is truly worse," is if you have already assumed that what is "truly worse" is in some way arbitrary or inscrutable in the first place.

People refuse to accept that the Earth is round, they deny the germ theory of infectious disease, they think floride in their water is a mind control technique, they disagree about what the value of 1/0 should be, or if something can simultaneously both be and not-be in an unqualified sense. Rarely, if ever, do demonstrations in any sense "force" people to see the correctness of some view. — Count Timothy von Icarus

To place bread in front of someone who is hungry does not involve me in any "oughts", just "is's," and yet we know exactly what the person will do. The common person knows why: you ought to eat when you are hungry. — Leontiskos

I think that, like so much of Hume's thought, the Guillotine relies on question begging. Hume is a diagnostician, seeing what follows from the assumptions and prejudices of his era. But ask most people "why is it bad for you if I burn out your eyes, or if I burn out your sons eyes," and the responses will be something like:

"If you burn out my eyes it would be incredibly painful and then I would be blind, so of course it wouldn't be good."

The response: "ah ha! Look, you're tried to justify a value statement about goodness with facts!" and the idea that what is "good" doesn't relate to these facts is prima facie ridiculous here. — Count Timothy von Icarus

The choice I laid out was between Christ and Epicurus as an obvious counter-example from the ancient world of two ethical doctrines of thought which conflict. Both of them rely upon is-statements.

What this is meant to highlight is that just because you have some is-statements -- a "What is it for this kind of creature to be good?" -- that doesn't remove the conflict found in modern philosophy, from here:

I do think this is a problem modern ethics creates for itself. It tends to be more rules based (an after effect of the Reformation and theologies that precluded any strong role for human virtue). Even as the theology has crumbled, the structure has often remained. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Even if we switch from rules or consequences to the development of character due to the kind of creature we are there is still the question --

Why should one, in the general sense, do good is much harder for me to answer than why the good is attractive. — Moliere

"Because it's good for you", sure -- but which one?

It's easy to say that I'm an Epicurean because Epicurus is attractive to me. But it's much harder to generalize that to some general person.

Doing good is a personal decision. Although doing good is generally considered an altruistic act, it isn’t something an individual ought to do.

Individuals have have the choice to decide whether or not they ought to (ought meaning must do) do an act they consider good.

Moral good is not its own sort of good here, distinct from the good of a "good car" or "good food." All related to flourishing. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I was listening to Edward Feser recently, and he argued that the modern abandonment of teleology left morality in a lurch. Severed from its teleological foundation, morality became inscrutable, as it is in both Hume and Kant.

The Dark Knight was Batman right to hide (to lie about) the fact that Harvey Dent degenerated into the monstrous Two Face? That seems to be what the film would lead us to believe. — Count Timothy von Icarus

And yet the sequel takes that in a different direction, where the lie about justice erupts into full scale anarchy.

Are the theorems of geometry vacuous because they are already contained in Euclid's postulates? Are syllogisms vacuous because all conclusions are contained in the premises? Is deterministic computation vacuous because its results always follow from the inputs with a probability of 100%?

We might think "2+2" is just another way to say "4," and "1 ÷ 3" just another way to say "1/3," but "179 ÷ 3 " is "59 and 2/3rds" seems genuinely informative unless you're an arithmetic prodigy.

Plus, not all circles are viscous circles. I would say "it's good (truly better) for you to be good—to be a good person and live a good life," is circular in a sense, but the way an ascending spiral is circular. It loops back around on itself at higher levels, with greater depths beneath it, in a sort of fractal recurrence. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, good points. It is curious how little folks around here understand logic, argument, and how knowledge is created. In the air is the vaguely Wittengenstenian idea that a good argument is nothing more than a tautology.

I know of no similar move in the Eastern tradition or among the Islamic scholars, — Count Timothy von Icarus

Perhaps not in the East, but Islam provides an antecedent for Hume in its late-Medieval forms of Voluntarism and Occasionalism. I believe Alfred Freddoso has written on this.

I think that, like so much of Hume's thought, the Guillotine relies on question begging. Hume is a diagnostician, seeing what follows from the assumptions and prejudices of his era. But ask most people "why is it bad for you if I burn out your eyes, or if I burn out your sons eyes," and the responses will be something like:

"If you burn out my eyes it would be incredibly painful and then I would be blind, so of course it wouldn't be good." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yep. :lol:

You only get to a position where it possible for it to be "choiceworthy" to prefer "what is truly worse," is if you have already assumed that what is "truly worse" is in some way arbitrary or inscrutable in the first place. — Count Timothy von Icarus

And as far as I can tell the people who go around spouting Hume's arguments are usually lying, saying things they don't believe to be true. Hume himself was more interesting insofar as he recognized that he could not uphold strong skepticism while keeping a straight face:

And though a Pyrrhonian may throw himself or others into a momentary amazement and confusion by his profound reasonings; the first and most trivial event in life will put to flight all his doubts and scruples, and leave him the same, in every point of action and speculation, with the philosophers of every other sect, or with those who never concerned themselves in any philosophical researches. When he awakes from his dream, he will be the first to join in the laugh against himself, and to confess, that all his objections are mere amusement, and can have no other tendency than to show the whimsical condition of mankind... — David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, § xii, 128

What this is meant to highlight is that just because you have some is-statements -- a "What is it for this kind of creature to be good?" -- that doesn't remove the conflict found in modern philosophy — Moliere

"What does it mean to be good/virtuous" is not a question that begins (exists?) with the moderns. This is a wholly different issue than Hume's characteristically modern preoccupation with inscrutable oughtness.

The differences across cultures and times make it quite obvious that 'the Good' in the terms you're using is just a group agreement to some moral boundaries. This is not particularly predictable as between groups, or across time. Your syllogism (as such) simply isn't giving what you want it to. — AmadeusD

I am unsure what wasn't 'precise' in this? You can statistically predict anything, even if it's arbitrary. I think what you're trying to get into the discussion is that, given certain aims we can predict what people will say is good. For Muslims, there's predictive power, for Christians there's predictive power - but overall its extremely hard to predict what people will think is 'good', partiicularly if you're going to be anymore fine-grained than calling it 'relative'. Which, i'll say, is totally acceptable, but stepping back from any particularly group which has (from any third party's perspective) arbitrary moral rules based on arbitrarily up-held traditions (arguable, just clarifying my point) it is not possible to predict with any accuracy. Groups agreement to moral boundaries aren't ipso facto reasonable. They can be arbitrary.

So, I don't grant hte premise. If it were true, I still reject the conclusion. That was my point with the first reply. My assent to P1 is irrelevant to the failure of the point, imo.

Too bad, that's the definition of good. — Philosophim

Nah my guy. The definitions of good vary between 'that which is desired', 'that which is required' and ; 'that which is morally right'. Circular, unless restrictive. Which is why it's such a problem, and why threads like this exist. Addressed briefly above, this is the exact cause of the vagueness of 'Good'. It is entirely relative.

I am unsure what wasn't 'precise' in this? — AmadeusD

You're using a shotgun approach and hoping you hit something. I want a single criticism, not four.

You can statistically predict anything, even if it's arbitrary. — AmadeusD

No, I don't see that one can statistically predict arbitrary outcomes.

I think what you're trying to get into the discussion is that, given certain aims we can predict what people will say is good. For Muslims... — AmadeusD

No, I think we can predict what people will say is good regardless of their religion. People will say that food is good, for instance, whether they are Muslim or Christian. If we can predict that most all people will say that food is good, then we have no reason to believe that people's identification of food as good is arbitrary.

It is not always good for us to have what we "perceive as good." We can be wrong about what is truly good or truly best. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Fair enough. So my suggestion for Version 1 should have read, “If you are good, it will be good for you, in the sense that either you or someone else is able to identify it as such by experiencing or observing some particular thing about you.” This is starting to sound a little lawyerly but I’m working hard to avoid saying something that can’t be falsified. For after all, if I said, “. . . it will be good for you but no one can tell, we just know it must be true,” we’d be back at square one, with a merely asserted union.

I would say "it's good (truly better) for you to be good—to be a good person and live a good life," is circular in a sense, but the way an ascending spiral is circular. It loops back around on itself at higher levels, with greater depths beneath it, in a sort of fractal recurrence. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, this is the sort of thing we want to be true, and it’s very poetically expressed. But at this point one really has to stop and say, “But what do you mean? If you can’t explain what it means without images of spirals and fractals, aren’t I entitled to wonder if it’s actually (rationally) explicable at all?” For, when all’s said and done, I’m still left with what appear to be two quite different usages of “good,” and the desire, but not the means, to unite them. Simply asserting their union won’t do.

Are the theorems of geometry vacuous because they are already contained in Euclid's postulates? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Now here is a Kantian question! As I’m sure you know, Kant believed that mathematical truths were synthetic, and not contained in any premises. Dodging any deep debates on math here, let’s just say that if Kant was wrong, and arithmetic, geometry, and logic are indeed all analytic, I don’t think anyone has ever suggested that analytic truths are vacuous. But that’s just the problem here -- “It’s good for you to be good” is not being put forward as an analytic truth. It’s meant to inform us of something we didn’t know, or so I assume. Or perhaps you do mean it analytically? -- something like “To understand what ‛the good’ means is also to know that it is good for you to be good”?

. . . another "slide into multiplicity" whereby we have many sui generis "Goods" with "moral good" constituting just one good among a plurality. — Count Timothy von Icarus

This, to me, is an important insight into the whole question. What I find interesting is that both you and I believe in the desirability of avoiding a multiplicity of goods. I very much want “the Good” to be univocal, and all the uses of “good” to be instances of the same thing, so that “moral good” would not be sui generis in a worrisome sense, any more than “aesthetic good” would be. But . . . the problem is that, IMO, you haven’t yet shown how it can be the case. Perhaps no one can, but we have to do more than assert what I’ve been calling a “metaphysical union of goods” but not explain how it works in a way that defeats the objections I’ve raised so far. How in the world can execution be good for Socrates? Better than the alternatives, sure, but good? You can’t just fold the two meanings of “good” together by fiat, and say that because Socrates has made a good choice, has done a virtuous thing, it therefore automatically becomes good for him. That is what we want for a conclusion, but we lack the argument.

Also, I do think that to stop the discussion before modern philosophy is to greatly decrease our chances of a solution to this problem. I mean no offense, but have you given a lot of thought to Kant’s ethics? This problem of avoiding a multiplicity of goods is central to his project. His solutions are very different from Plato’s or Aristotle’s or Aquinas’s, and offer perspectives that I believe are central. Moreover, he was a firm Christian believer and insisted that the truths of morality be consistent with the truths of revelation, so, again, I just can’t see this as some huge gap with the ancients – at least not the ancient Christians.

I’m sure TPF has done a thread on the Groundwork at some point in the past – maybe revisit?

Too bad, that's the definition of good.
— Philosophim

Nah my guy. The definitions of good vary between 'that which is desired', 'that which is required' and ; 'that which is morally right'. — AmadeusD

No moral good is ever about what people simply want. If I desire to murder a person, no one sane would call that 'good'. "Desire" in this case is, "What should be." That which is required is "What should be." And "That which is morally right" is "What should be." If you have a definition of good that doesn't include "What should be", then you're not talking about a moral good.

To be clear, this doesn't define "where, what, why, how, or who determines" what should be. Its just that the common kernel of every viable definition of moral good entails, "What should be".

"Because it's good for you", sure -- but which one?

Well, for this you need metaphysics to explain why the Good is a principle and why we should think it is a unified principle.

Do Stoicism, Platonism, Aristotelianism, Christianity, Taoism, Confucianism, and Epicureanism all have totally different views of what is good? It doesn't seem to me that they do; there is a lot of overlap. So, we might assume some unity there.

Certainly, the Patristics didn't seem to think "the philosophers," had a totally different idea of goodness from that of Christianity. "All truth is God's truth," after all. Sometimes Pope Francis's: "All religions are paths to God. I will use an analogy, they are like different languages that express the divine." is taken to be an arch post-modern hersey, but it's simply the same Logos universalism that has been around since the Church Fathers, and which is enshrined in the Catechism (also, better apologetics than calling people infidels or pagans).

Presumably, there is some way to decide between "is statements," else knowledge is impossible. And there are also arguments that we might say warrant more of less credence, while being far from certain.

The issue of "choice" to me is simply embarking seriously on any ethical life and the life of philosophy itself. As St. Augustine and St. Anselm say, we must "have faith that we might understand," since no practical theory of the ethical life will be fully apparent to us at first glance.

Also, I feel I should note that no one in the classical tradition says that everyone should be contemplatives. St. Thomas and the anonymous "Cloud of Unknowing" say specifically that this is not so. Only a few people have the temperament and aptitude for this path, and not all can follow it even if they do due to other demands and responsibilities. St. Augustine turns away a potential monastic because he is a high ranking Roman military official and is needed there.

The other thing is that the heights of contemplation are not attained through discursive reason. This ties in to classical theories of knowledge. In the Ad Thelassium, St. Maximus goes into depth about how direct experience is superior to discursive reasoning (using I Corinthians to justify this). St. Thomas even has a chapter in the Summa Contra Gentiles that is titled something like: "Why the Happiness of Man is Not Knowledge of God had by Demonstration." By contemplation is meant something like "mystical illumination," and this was often had by people in the "active life" (e.g. St. Francis's vision of the seraphim).

The life of philosophy is adjacent to and supports the life of contemplation, but contemplation is something the laity can engage in. On some views, the entire point of the liturgy is contemplation (e.g. the modern Catholic "liturgical movement.)

On a related note, St. Palladius's "Saying of the Desert Fathers," opens with a story like this. Three saints are together and leave to go do good in the world. One is given the gift of healing and heals. One is given the gift of teaching and teaches. They do this for many years. Yet both eventually grow discouraged because death and dishonesty still abound in the fallen world.

The last saint went out to the desert to pray for the world in solitude. Years later, the other two come to join him, both beaten down by the world. He tells them to stir the well he has dug and look inside. They do, and all they can see is the clouds of dirt, a sea of small granules obscuring everything.

He tells them to wait, and an hour later asks them to look again. This time they can see clear to the bottom, and the light of the Sun is clearly reflected, allowing them to see themselves.

"So it is with the spirit is the moral." To see both the light of God and the inner self requires stillness, hesychasm. But the other moral is that even the hermit ends up helping people, and it's the same way in St. Athanasius' St. Anthony the Great and other hermit stories. There is no fully contemplative life, it's always active as well, because eros leads up and agape pours down.

Yes, this is the sort of thing we want to be true, and it’s very poetically expressed. But at this point one really has to stop and say, “But what do you mean? If you can’t explain what it means without images of spirals and fractals, aren’t I entitled to wonder if it’s actually (rationally) explicable at all?” For, when all’s said and done, I’m still left with what appear to be two quite different usages of “good,” and the desire, but not the means, to unite them. Simply asserting their union won’t do.

I very much want “the Good” to be univocal, and all the uses of “good” to be instances of the same thing, so that “moral good” would not be sui generis in a worrisome sense, any more than “aesthetic good” would be. But . . . the problem is that, IMO, you haven’t yet shown how it can be the case. Perhaps no one can, but we have to do more than assert what I’ve been calling a “metaphysical union of goods” but not explain how it

Two things:

First, it seems like you keep ignoring the option of analagous predication here, but have you given an argument for why it is implausible?

Second, it possible that the demand that everything be reduced to univocal predication part of the problem? Univocal predication is proper to logic. Starting with Descartes, there is an increasing attempt to reduce philosophy to logic and mathematics. This doesn't work. For example, when Sam Harris tries to lay out an ethics that is, in some key respects, quite close to Aristotle and St. Thomas, the project founders on the problem of univocity.

Harris has to wonder about "moral paradoxes" that arise from trying to maximize either average well-being or total well-being. They are interesting, but do we really think human flourishing and goodness are the types of things that can be summed up? To sum something or to take a mean of it is to have already made it a multitude. This is why Harris is able to offer little more than the conviction that we can muddle through such paradoxes, and fairly unconvincing attempts to solve collective action problems, prisoner's dilemmas, etc. using appeals to the observation that "fairness activates reward centers in the brain" in some highly controlled, large sample studies.

This gets back to Banno's idea of a "moral calculus," by which we sum things up and get, I would assume, a numerical value of how good they are. And the idea of some sort of database of rules all rational agents should agree too seems if anything more of a stretch because it seems to ignore the social and historical contextuality of the Good in human life, particularly as expressed in the common good.

But if the good is what "all aims seek," and aims are what allow us (and all things) to become more truly unified, more truly "one," then the good always relates to the whole, and it cannot be anything but an analagous principle because the Good is an extremely general principle (the most general for Aristotle). This is for the same reason that there cannot be one univocal measure of life for all organisms, and yet there are not multiple sui generis lifes (plural) either.

Perhaps no one can, but we have to do more than assert what I’ve been calling a “metaphysical union of goods” but not explain how it works in a way that defeats the objections I’ve raised so far.

But this is precisely what the Physics and Metaphysics (and St. Thomas' respective commentaries on them) argues to (building off the general argument of how the Good is involved in self-determination across the Platonic corpus). It isn't just asserted. If one takes a developmental view of the Aristotlean corpus, this isn't where he started, it's where he ended up.

It just happens that the explanation is also what grounds the sciences and explains discursive reasoning.

How in the world can execution be good for Socrates? Better than the alternatives, sure, but good? You can’t just fold the two meanings of “good” together by fiat, and say that because Socrates has made a good choice, has done a virtuous thing, it therefore automatically becomes good for him. That is what we want for a conclusion, but we lack the argument.

First, you're returning back to "all fortune is good fortune." We need not affirm this to affirm the classical view of the good (Aristotle doesn't ), so we need not affirm that being executed or tortured is "good for you."

Although if something is the "best of all options," then it also has something good about it, no? Do we need to say that something is "the best possible" for it to be good at all?

Second, "being good" is most properly said of beings, not things beings do, and certainly not things they do rarely. Goodness relates to the whole. The measure of a good life is a life, not a sum of moments. Recall Solon and ben Sirach: "count no man happy until he is dead."

You keep pivoting from the whole to the part. This is a different sort of "slide into multiplicity." At the very least, this is unhelpful for understanding the ancients.

I'd argue that it's unhelpful for ethics as well. Trying to generate rules for isolated acts, or calculate the good derived from the consequences of different isolated moments is unhelpful. We can consider the example of the Persian street urchin for whom being unjustly maimed was the "best thing that ever happened to him," or the Frenchman whose rare just act "ruined his whole life."

Plus, if we look at isolated acts, being executed sometimes is good for someone. It might be better to be executed than live in a state of terrible suffering. Just assume that if Socrates had been found innocent he'd catch a disease a week after he would have been executed and would then die a particularly excruciating and drawn out death.

If we say "but surely it is better to live and not be subject to immense suffering," then why not say "it's always better to have what is truly best?" But what is truly best for an individual is going to involve what is truly best for the whole world, and so the focus on isolated acts with break down here anyhow.




To be sure, we can usefully speak of good and bad acts. It is probably most useful to speak of these in terms of what generally follows from them though, the unifying principles at work in them. Otherwise we will be stuck tracing down an endless line of causes tied to some specific act, a butterfly effect by which our decision to cheat on our wife today prevents a genocide 180 years from now.

Rules have the same problem if they are rigidly applied. We either have rules that sometimes seem to force us to do obviously bad things, like turning people over to the SS because we "should never lie," or we end up caveating them so much to avoid preverse outcomes that we might as well just make them general advice, with the true rule being "strive to be the best you can be."

Second, it possible that the demand that everything be reduced to univocal predication part of the problem? Univocal predication is proper to logic. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, and even in logic univocity founders. @J's thread on Kimhi, where the univocity of p in the first two premises of a modus ponens is questioned, is a perfect example of the way that strict univocity doesn't even work in logic. There have actually been a number of threads in the past months demonstrating in effect that univocal logical formalisms cannot even stand up to their own scrutiny.

Why should one do that which is good? No, I don't think that good is synonymous with, "something one ought to do". For example, most people would agree that selling all your worldly possessions and donating the money to charity is something that would be good. However, that doesn't mean that one is obligated to do so. Please input into this conversation with your own takes. — Hyper

There are so many launching points in this OP that it's hard to choose a start. But, time is a wasting, so, ...

All weakness, finally, is immoral. That is to say, to weaken the position of the most morally intended choosers is NOT WISE and therefore 'selling all you own' in a Capitalist economy is DUMB, and weak, therefore immoral, not moral. Misunderstanding morality DOES NOT HELP.

Flip the script. If that same chooser is in a situation of Communism, it becomes meaningless to say 'sell', in most senses. Real Communism would be defined by forced balance of per capita wealth per person. That would mean there would be no real 'buying' and 'selling' as we commonly colloquially speak of these actions.

Also, the mere existence of and labelling of a financial or distributional entity as a charity is no even near certainty of moral aims. That presumption would not bare up under any meaningful examination in modern times in the West, let alone just in general. #SupportMyDrinkingHabit(Charity)

The word 'obligation' to me has a too orderly stance to me at least. Moral duty is NOT best expressed using that term. Moral duty is more of a 'should', not a 'must' and more of a 'proper aim' than an obligation, if you follow. Likewise, it can be confusing to speak of the 'burden' of choice, rather than the privilege of 'free will'.

But, let's go back to the core question ...

The core question is really 'why should one do that which is GOOD?' Another point there is that the word 'good' colloquial is entirely insufficient as stated. One ... SHOULD ... clarify that term by mentioning perfection. The singleton of GOOD is the single point of objective moral perfection. And now the subjectivists can start their horridly immoral banter and set of objections to objectivity. So, ANYWAY, by GOOD I mean THE GOOD, that impossible perfect intent.

The implausibility of the perfect GOOD is what makes Pragmatists sinners par none. They improperly (immorally) believe that because perfection is unlikely in the extreme (the limit as intent approaches impossible) that in fact it is right NOT TO TRY. I call this cowardice 'intending to fail'. Really it is one of the clear nadirs of all philosophy, BUT, I digress.

The core question again RE-STATED is JUST the one word, 'WHY?' All wisdom comes from deontological intent, so WHY is the only real question. Again, there is NO OTHER question in the universe, finally.

---

So at long last we have laid the framework in which we can attempt to answer the question with a currently responsible level of clarity. If we do not frame it BETTER 10 years from now, there has been a rather unfortunate failure somewhere. Progress SHOULD be made.

Why bother with GOOD? What SHOULD is there really?

It's alarmingly simple and yet infinite in complexity at the same time, like all meaningful questions and as mentioned, 'why' is really the only one.

There is only ONE consequence in the universe from aligning oneself or approaching or intending (all synonymous in some ways) the GOOD. That is GENUINE happiness. One MUST say genuine amid this explanation or the real effect is lost, presumed, perverted; every error that can be made will be.

Morality is THE single hardest thing that there is. Free will is really the only thing in existence and its goal is moral choice via THAT agency, the agency of free will. The ONLY guiding force in the universe is the consequences of choice(s). So, happiness and unhappiness ARE NOT 'feelings'. They are more core than that as in they are a receding percentage of consequences to all choice, at first effectively somehow 50% in general likelihood, or, let's say we can imagine that split as easy to discuss.

Since more and more moral choices are harder and harder to make, the consequence MUST BE in truth, more and more alluring. I assert that it is. The issue is that more and more moral choices require more and more effort within each virtue. Only a virtue can balance out another virtue. An overexpressed virtue becomes a vice. And this is the EXPLANATION for disingenuous happiness, a COMMON thing. The systemic consequence for a choice CONTINUES on its maximal trajectory, infinitely. But, GENUINE happiness is bent back towards the singleton of perfect GOOD by the OTHER virtues. As such mere choosers everywhere are easily confused (deluded) into following those infinite hyperbolas AWAY from objective GOOD. Imagine how hard it is to 'do better than you have ever done before', at a certain point. And yet this is the only choice SET that will lead you to the experience of greater GENUINE happiness. So, therein is revealed quite basically the central trouble of moral choice.

WHY? Because perfection! That is why!

Perfection is the cause of desire. The fact that collapsed time CONTAINS a single point of perfection CAUSES desire to exist. Yet and still, the realization of desire is often a cause of rot and ruin, a disintegration of everything. That is because the single linear path to the singleton of perfection CHANGES based on one's current moral state. So, this is the proof for SUBJECTIVE experience amid a universe with OBJECTIVE moral truth. Choosing to remain deluded (subjective) is indeed a type of failure (and always will be).

The perfect CANNOT be the enemy of the GOOD. The perfect IS the GOOD. The perfect is not the enemy of anything except immorality, imperfection, weakness. And to those even still it is NOT really an enemy. In loving perfection, they are included and forgiven. Figure it out!

Well, for this you need metaphysics to explain why the Good is a principle and why we should think it is a unified principle.

Do Stoicism, Platonism, Aristotelianism, Christianity, Taoism, Confucianism, and Epicureanism all have totally different views of what is good? It doesn't seem to me that they do; there is a lot of overlap. So, we might assume some unity there. — Count Timothy von Icarus

We might, and it would look plausible -- but that is kind of the point I'm disputing here :D.

Which isn't to say that synthetic accounts are wrong -- I'm fine with synthetic accounts and attempts to reconcile positions. They're just as interesting as why someone may want to divide from a position.

The sense I get is that good is as commonsensical as eating bread when hungry, at least if we go back to the ancient world prior to modern philosophical inventions that cause confusion.

That seems too rosey to me -- and looks like MacIntyre's thoughts in After Virtue, at least by my memory, which is why I've been saying I think this is an overpromise. His book is great for highlighting the importance of virtue-theoretic approaches, but I don't think that the ancient mind is so different from the modern mind that modern philosophy cut out some inner wisdom that the ancients possessed. I think they're scrambling in the dark just as much as any of us are.

And my evidence is that they didn't agree. Conceptually Christianity and Epicureanism is easier to divide, though there's the funny bit of timelines -- but historically even the Stoics and Epicureans disagreed and competed over students, and they were contemporaries in the ancient world with the concerns of the ancient world and a fuller philosophy behind their thoughts to "ground" the ethical answers.

It's all really good stuff. I just don't think the moderns tripped across a problem of their own invention, but rather that the problem was alive and well in ancient times -- it just didn't have the clarification yet. The ancient mind distinguished between facts and values, in which case the conceptual resources are there to construct the naturalistic fallacy, the open question argument, and all the stuff Moore brought up about the meaning of good.

Certainly, the Patristics didn't seem to think "the philosophers," had a totally different idea of goodness from that of Christianity. "All truth is God's truth," after all. Sometimes Pope Francis's: "All religions are paths to God. I will use an analogy, they are like different languages that express the divine." is taken to be an arch post-modern hersey, but it's simply the same Logos universalism that has been around since the Church Fathers, and which is enshrined in the Catechism (also, better apologetics than calling people infidels or pagans). — Count Timothy von Icarus

I remember seeing Pope Francis calling communists Christians, and I couldn't help but laugh.

We are Christians when not in power, and just as good as Satanists when the fascists are in power, deserving of death.

Good apologetics, as you note -- but I don't think it's true.

We can make good political allies, depending upon the circumstances, but I don't think good is that all-encompassing.

Presumably, there is some way to decide between "is statements," else knowledge is impossible. And there are also arguments that we might say warrant more of less credence, while being far from certain. — Count Timothy von Icarus

For the Epicurean there are two ways -- the evidence of the senses, and the lowering of anxiety. Knowledge is a tool for human beings.

One of the parts of the four-part cure says something like "The Gods do not care about your actions/There are no magic powers in the world" -- it applied equally to people who tried to live their life to appease gods as well as to people who would sacrifice animals, etc., to gods. These are viewed as superstitions which do nothing but cause anxiety, and we need look no further than our senses to see this is so.

But, really, I think the "is-statements" of the ontology are selected on the basis of how well they fit into the ethical frame. Similar so for Stoicism, and all the ancients: the metaphysical structure is a painting of the ethical core that justifies the ethical core as if it were an object of knowledge.

The issue of "choice" to me is simply embarking seriously on any ethical life and the life of philosophy itself. As St. Augustine and St. Anselm say, we must "have faith that we might understand," since no practical theory of the ethical life will be fully apparent to us at first glance. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think what it shows is that facts and values are different. Even with the interplay between what a creature is and values -- it's not a philosophical mistake to note that people choose different things in similar circumstances. The facts being the same, they choose differently. So we cannot just point to the facts -- there is bread -- and pretend we've also said "If you are hungry then you ought to eat bread" because we said it in a conversation with a hungry person. Some people, even when hungry, don't eat. It could be a hunger strike, or a neurological disconnect which prevents the person from acting on the physiological signals of hunger, or a fast -- and when you place the bread in front of them they will not eat because they do not believe "If you are hungry then you ought to eat bread"

Also, I feel I should note that no one in the classical tradition says that everyone should be contemplatives. — Count Timothy von Icarus

This is why I said I thought you are taking a vertical perspective -- you're looking up the ladder to climb to higher heights. Which is also why I brought up the ubermensch -- it's very much in that vein if I want to bring up a horizontal perspective, one which is towards the horizon and amongst the herd that we are all a part of.

If the contemplative life is what is best, and the contemplative life is not for everyone, then not everyone will have what is best.

That's fine for a cadre of masters passing on wisdom.

But I'm looking outwards, and also I have no pretense to being a part of such a monastic life -- I see the tower from the outside.

Which, obviously, I like the products of the tower and am in their debt. So that life is not my target.

On a related note, St. Palladius's "Saying of the Desert Fathers," opens with a story like this. Three saints are together and leave to go do good in the world. One is given the gift of healing and heals. One is given the gift of teaching and teaches. They do this for many years. Yet both eventually grow discouraged because death and dishonesty still abound in the fallen world.

The last saint went out to the desert to pray for the world in solitude. Years later, the other two come to join him, both beaten down by the world. He tells them to stir the well he has dug and look inside. They do, and all they can see is the clouds of dirt, a sea of small granules obscuring everything.

He tells them to wait, and an hour later asks them to look again. This time they can see clear to the bottom, and the light of the Sun is clearly reflected, allowing them to see themselves.

"So it is with the spirit is the moral." To see both the light of God and the inner self requires stillness, hesychasm. But the other moral is that even the hermit ends up helping people, and it's the same way in St. Athanasius' St. Anthony the Great and other hermit stories. There is no fully contemplative life, it's always active as well, because eros leads up and agape pours down. — Count Timothy von Icarus

And I'd say that contemplatives are good -- insofar that the contemplative is enjoying that life, ie., is not filled with anxiety in the pursuit. The part Epicurus would point out about the ecstasies of spiritual life is that these are the "middle ground" pleasures -- not necessary but a natural pleasure (sex is another pleasure that falls into this category). So insofar that one's pursuit of these goods doesn't incur anxiety they are fine, but if you're anxious because you're not having enough sex then your attachment to sex is the cause of your pain and you ought to attend to that desire, lower it, so that you can remain calm.

The bit I'm targeting is that it's the best life -- it's the best life for contemplatives, but not for not-contemplatives. For Epicurus he was something like a doctor of the community; and just like the dentist is important he was important, but a little more influential given that he worked on the souls of people rather than their teeth.

But, once the job is done, Epicurus is no more a master than the student. They are on equal terms. If they want to pick up the trade then they can study, but that doesn't make them a better person -- the lack of anxiety is the highest good, not the ability to cure people.

Thanks for this. You've offered two suggestions I will take up: to question more carefully whether this is a case of wanting univocal predication when that is inappropriate; and to explore analogous predication more fully. The first I can spend time on myself. For the second, could you perhaps say briefly how analogous predication would apply here, in the case of what looks like two usages of "good"? It's quite possible I don't yet understand how that would work.

This view of a continuity between ancient and modern ethics is similar to what I’ve been saying to Count T, if you’ve been following that conversation. I agree that the disagreements among ancient ethical systems may be evidence for this view. Even more striking, to me, is the fact that ethical discourse—and disagreement— has gone on, right into the present. If ethical truth had indeed been achieved in the context of virtue ethics, the continued dispute about it would need some explaining. I don’t remember — does MacIntyre offer some account of why things went so downhill? Why did Western culture end up in this “Canticle for Liebowitz” situation?

This view of a continuity between ancient and modern ethics is similar to what I’ve been saying to Count T — J

I think you and @Moliere are doing little more than trading in ambiguities. If you are not, then be straightforward about you claims. "Ancient and modern ethics are continuous/similar because they both ________."

Moliere seems to be committing a straightforward non sequitur, "There are certain similarities between ancient and modern ethics, therefore Hume's 'guillotine' is not distinctively modern."

This view of a continuity between ancient and modern ethics is similar to what I’ve been saying to Count T, if you’ve been following that conversation. — J

I have! And I agree.

I agree that the disagreements among ancient ethical systems may be evidence for this view. Even more striking, to me, is the fact that ethical discourse—and disagreement— has gone on, right into the present. If ethical truth had indeed been achieved in the context of virtue ethics, the continued dispute about it would need some explaining.

I think the idea is something like modern thinking broke us off from ancient thinking to such a point that modern thought has lost the fundamental truth of philosophy -- wisdom -- in place of whatever it is pursuing right now (the idea here being that the ancients have a kind of "time tested" wisdom)

I don’t remember — does MacIntyre offer some account of why things went so downhill? Why did Western culture end up in this “Canticle for Liebowitz” situation?

It's been entirely too long since i've read to remember the specifics of his account. I remember it turned me onto naturalistic virtue-theoretic moral realism, and a lot of my arguments in this thread are a result of reading up on that.

"Ancient and modern ethics are continuous/similar because they both ________." — Leontiskos

...ask, "What's good?"

...ask, "What's good?" — Moliere

Right:

What this is meant to highlight is that just because you have some is-statements -- a "What is it for this kind of creature to be good?" -- that doesn't remove the conflict found in modern philosophy — Moliere

"What does it mean to be good/virtuous" is not a question that begins (exists?) with the moderns. This is a wholly different issue than Hume's characteristically modern preoccupation with inscrutable oughtness. — Leontiskos

-

There are two ways to go here. On the one hand we could say that ancients and moderns both ask what is good, but the moderns also do something that the ancients did not do (and that this breaks the supposed discontinuity between them). On the other hand we could observe that for very many moderns, asking what is good is a pointless and otiose question (Michael and Amadeus are two clear examples of this).

Even @J's approach seems to challenge this continuity, for he thinks that Kant's view is uniquely correct. If Kant's view is uniquely correct and is not a continuation of earlier moral philosophy, then how could Kant be continuous with earlier moral philosophy?

On it's face, this idea that there is strong continuity between ancient and modern ethics is false. I think you may be conflating it with a different contention, namely the claim that ancient remedies cannot solve modern problems.

I think the idea is something like modern thinking broke us off from ancient thinking to such a point that modern thought has lost the fundamental truth of philosophy -- wisdom -- in place of whatever it is pursuing right now (the idea here being that the ancients have a kind of "time tested" wisdom) — Moliere

I wish I knew what "modern thinking" consisted of, that supposedly made it either so unique or so pernicious. Anscombe doesn't persuade me. When I read Plato, I feel as if all those arguments might be occurring among my neighbors, they are so vivid and contemporary. (Well, if my neighbors were a little more philosophical!) The things that concerned Plato and Aristotle are right at the top of my list too -- to say nothing of Christian thought. As for wisdom, it's true that Aristotle often sounds to me as if he believes he's achieved complete wisdom in all matters -- but not Plato. So this is perhaps another instance of how there was important disagreement between ancient and ancient. And I bet I'm oversimplifying Aristotle's complacency as well.

The problem with "time-tested wisdom," of course, is that we are still in time, and the wisdom continues to be tested, and you could hardly maintain that no one has raised any important questions about Greek philosophy, or about ethics in general, since. I suppose there is an illusion of "time-tested-ness" because it started earlier, and for so many centuries had no serious challengers in Western culture. But I am not a historian of philosophy, so I'm guessing. I also think, as I wrote somewhere recently, that the "loss of fundamental truths" picture is meant to go hand in hand with a picture of actual moral decline, such that Western society is now supposed to be much worse, ethically, than it used to be.

There are two ways to go here. On the one hand we could say that ancients and moderns both ask what is good, but the moderns also do something that the ancients did not do (and that this breaks the supposed discontinuity between them). On the other hand we could observe that for very many moderns, asking what is good is a pointless and otiose question (Michael and Amadeus are two clear examples of this). — Leontiskos

I choose path one.

What then?

I'm not sure there are ancients who are as explicit as Hume -- so I'm saying he's making an advance in ethical thinking in pointing out how is/ought frequently get conflated as if they have the same import.

The important thing to note that I think might be misunderstood is that this doesn't mean we can't be moral beings -- one interpretation of Hume's ethical theory is that morality is real, and justified by the passions.

So he's attacking a sacred cow of the philosophers, but he's not jumping in to declare a fallacy or something like that.

On it's face, this idea that there is strong continuity between ancient and modern ethics is false. I think you may be conflating it with a different contention, namely the claim that ancient remedies cannot solve modern problems. — Leontiskos

I think I am, though I have some theories in the background -- that are mostly feels at the moment -- which ought be set aside. I think I can still defend my position, though. Hume's clarification is an advance in thinking because it was a point of confusion which could hide arguments prior to him. Also, the fallacy is only to list a fact as a value -- Hume links values to facts through passions.

It's because it's through the passions that his theory is controversial -- but it can be argued to be a (kind of) realism.

Even J's approach seems to challenge this continuity, for he thinks that Kant's view is uniquely correct. If Kant's view is uniquely correct and is not a continuation of earlier moral philosophy, then how could Kant be continuous with earlier moral philosophy? — Leontiskos

I've been reading along but not that closely.

What say you to this @J ?

Even J's approach seems to challenge this continuity, for he thinks that Kant's view is uniquely correct. If Kant's view is uniquely correct and is not a continuation of earlier moral philosophy, then how could Kant be continuous with earlier moral philosophy?
— Leontiskos

I've been reading along but not that closely.

What say you to this J ? — Moliere

Nonsense. I've been at pains to say that I do not agree with all of Kant's solutions to ethical problems. Just for starters, I don't think the categorical imperative can be stated in such a way as to do the ethical job Kant wanted it to do. I said that he "offers perspectives that I believe are central." They certainly are. He is for me the most important and impressive "modern" moral philosopher because he framed the problems with enormous originality and insight, raising questions that have been impossible to ignore ever since -- not because he always gets it right. This idea of philosophers being "uniquely correct" is a fantasy.

As for the continuity question, I see nothing in Kant's ethics -- apart from the Christian aspects -- that Socrates would not have both understood and been eager to debate.